


This Ghost We Both Can See

by KeeperOfTheMoonAndStars



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU, Imaginary Sherlock, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Mental Hospital AU, Mental patient John, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2014-03-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 08:04:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeeperOfTheMoonAndStars/pseuds/KeeperOfTheMoonAndStars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, isn't real.<br/>And he never was.<br/>John has to keep reminding himself of that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this wonderful drawing](http://indyfalcon.tumblr.com/post/42131370577/mental-patient-john-doodle)  
> The best place for information on updates is [my tumblr](forgivingthefall.tumblr.com)  
> 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Technically, he doesn’t even have to talk to Sherlock; he could just close his eyes and go back to sleep right now, and nobody would even know the difference. But he talks anyway, inside his head, so only Sherlock can hear.  
> 

For the first time in almost a year, Sherlock is back.

John can see him, a pale broken ghost hovering amidst the midnight indigo ocean of the room. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t pull up a chair, doesn’t perch feather-light on the edge of the bed like he so often did before. He just stands guard, cyan eyes distantly focused on John’s face, and John wonders how many nights Sherlock did this before, without John’s awareness, this standing sentry over a fallen soldier.

John shuts his eyes and shifts away, subconsciously reaching for the warmth of the other human being curled against him, but he cannot close his mind to the presence of the man hovering at his bedside. He can distinctly feel Sherlock’s scrutiny on the back of his neck, two cold spots in the cocoon of warmth in his bed, the deductions rolling off his skin and into those flickering eyes with such ease. He wonders what they are, what Sherlock can read from the invisible ink on John’s skin, the stories etched into the lines around his eyes, the chapter titles in the cuts on his palms, the plot twist in the faint bruise at his temple and the darkness under his eyes.

No, on second thought, he doesn’t wonder. He’s aware, so aware of what he’s become, of how achingly different he is, of how every bone in his body has healed seamlessly from invisible fractures, how he’s gone from being on the verge of shattering in the slightest breeze to standing strong and sturdy once more. His very genetic code has been unraveled, only to be rewritten time and time again. A lot can change in two years, he thinks.

Too much.

He feels the exact moment Sherlock’s focus shifts from him. The two points of pressure at the back of skull shift upwards, tracing along his jawline and over his face, disappearing into the mountains and valleys of his pillow. He knows instinctively to where the attention has been averted, and his spine stiffens without his consent. Part of him wants to curl into a protective ball, throw his body across that of the woman next to him in an attempt to shield her from those prying eyes. The other half longs to turn around and face Sherlock head on, stare at him defiantly and silently demand he question John’s choices, glare down any protests or biting deductions. His entire being is on high alert, nerves suddenly jangling, wanting nothing more than to protect the woman he loves.

But it’s not that simple; there’s still a third, smaller part of John that he’s buried under an avalanche of other emotions, smothered it with earth and rocks and attempting to build something sturdy on this unstable foundation. Deep beneath all that, the gusto and the faking and an overflowing waterfall of love, there are still the roots that he could not, would not, bring himself to rip out. He let them sit too long, and now enough has built up over it that the pain of excavation far outweighs the benefits of removal. He never thought those roots would amount to anything again. They are nothing more than a shadow of a tree that used to tower over all else, formidable and unbreakable, until it was so violently cut down.

Now, those dormant roots are blossoming again. Even after all these years, all it takes is a single glance from Sherlock and everything he’s tried so hard to forget, to push away, to ignore, suddenly rears its head and stretches towards the light.

There’s an unspoken question hanging in the air. He knows it doesn’t need answering, not really, because Sherlock is Sherlock and can obtain all the information he needs with a single sweep of the room. Besides, it’s pretty obvious, even to a mere mortal like John. Yet still, it’s there.

_Who is she?_

Not an accusation. Not quite, but close. And that newly-reawakened part of John reaches, trailing its fingertips through the deep vibrations of a voice so intimately familiar, a voice he’s been hearing in his head for years. A voice he thought he’d forgotten, or at least learned to ignore. Apparently, he was mistaken. The answer comes quickly, easily, as if Sherlock is unravelling the words from his throat and pulling them past his lips, a thin thread caught in the pale moonlight.

_She’s Mary._

A moment of silence; the thread pulls taught. Then, _Yes, but who is she to_ you?

There’s innocence in that voice, an honest openness that John hasn’t heard before. A sadness, a melancholy, a tinge of betrayal, wounded pride and disproven illusions. Confusion, too. Something John’s not used to, not from Sherlock, but he _has_ heard it before, many moons ago, back when the sun still shone and the earth was still in its proper orbit. Distant echoes come bouncing to the forefront once more; a bossy yet desperate phone call, danger nights, and something about a sock index.

Pity momentarily washes over John, and he chides himself. He doesn’t owe this man anything. He can stand there as long as he wants, yanking words from John’s throat and weaving them between his nimble fingers, but he won’t get an answer. John doesn’t owe him anything.

John owes him nothing.

Nothing, nothing, nothing at all.

Nothing.

No.

 John owes him _everything._

 _Everything,_ point blank. Which also means he owes the man an explanation.

He sighs, rolls over so he’s facing Sherlock again, but still doesn’t open his eyes. Mary shifts closer to him, pressing the tip of her nose against the back of his neck. He counts three of her breaths, three inhalations, three exhalations, before answering.

 _Look around, Sherlock. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Just...observe._ Never in his life had he ever imagined himself telling the great Sherlock Holmes to observe. Perhaps this serves as proof of his delusions. Perhaps Sherlock just didn’t want to look.

The pressure of Sherlock’s gaze averts again, and John can practically hear the cogs turning in the man’s head as he takes in every detail in the room. He braces himself, clenching a fist in the bed sheet, feeling the sudden need to have a hold on something solid to keep himself from drowning in the tidal wave he’s certain is about to come.

 _A small double bed, not intended to comfortably sleep more than one. The closet is small, almost too small, and many of her clothes have been moved to the downstairs coat closet to accommodate. Just less than half the closet is yours; your nice shoes are in there, too, meaning you sometimes stay here overnight when you work the next day. Judging by the pile of your clothes on the floor and the jumper on hanging on the doorknob, you’ve been here several days. There’s a mug on the table downstairs, the handle turned to the left, obviously from a left-handed person, yet the rest of the house is set up for somebody who’s right hand is dominant. Given that evidence, and the fact that she’s currently tucked up next to you like some overly loving pet, I’d say_ _girlfriend. I_ might _have said fiancée, but there is no ring, and you clearly still spend some nights apart, so just a steady girlfriend. Nice to see you finally have one of those, John. It took you long enough._

Jesus Christ.

It’s been a year. A year since the last deduction, a year since the last biting remark.

An entire year since his name last passed Sherlock’s lips.

John shudders, trying desperately to contain the hurricane inside his head, to swallow his screams, to push everything back into place. It’s all falling apart again, because of this ghost of a man standing at this bedside.

 _Anything else?_ He doesn’t necessarily want to know, yet he still feels compelled to ask.

Sherlock doesn’t respond for a small eternity, but God knows John’s used to that. And John knows he’s waiting, still expectant, even after all these days, months, hours. He wants his reward, his “brilliant,” his “genius,” his pat on the head. But he won’t get it. Not this time. Not after what he did, how the last time the two of them spoke, he was standing on a rooftop, preparing to tip over the edge and drag John’s entire life down with him to shatter on the pavement below, forcing John to watch all he cared about be destroyed in a single blow. That was not brilliant. Nor is this apparition lurking beside John, this party trick his mind is playing. He is not about to compliment Sherlock for finding a way to haunt him long after they’ve both died; because two men did die that night-one fell and collided, the other sank and drowned. So John lies there, eyes still closed, one hand absently tracing Mary’s arm where it’s wedged between them.

Finally, Sherlock answers. _This isn’t Baker Street._

The statement is so matter-of-fact, so without feeling, so flat and lusterless compared to the megawatt shine of Sherlock’s usual deductions, that it hits John like a punch in the gut. This isn’t Baker Street: this isn’t home. It is not the same sanctuary he and Sherlock shared for many years, not the same place they built together, stacking memories to form walls, sealing around the windows with moments of shared intimacy and the intensity that followed a case. There isn’t a grotesque smiley face spray-painted on the wall in a fit of boredom, nor is every available surface cluttered with books and files. There are no danger nights, no drug busts, no police calls at three AM. The wallpaper has a distinct lack of intricate patterns, the fridge has a distinct lack of heads, and the whole flat has a distinct lack of _them_ , the inseparable duo that became Holmes and Watson. Everything they worked for, everything they made, every shared instant of candle-lit warmth and comfortable companionship, every shouting match and hours of silent thought; John had left it all behind.

All of it, including Sherlock.

This is the first night Sherlock has appeared in Mary’s flat. He wonders what that says about his relationship with Mary, the fact that he’s imagining Sherlock here, of all places. Here, where he least belongs. This mundane little flat is no place for Sherlock, with his piercing eyes and spot-on observations and that great bloody coat. Sherlock was a man grander than any fiction, his lifestyle too fantastic to be reality, and he most certainly does not belong here.

Yet here he is, and John was the one who brought him here. Sherlock had been gone for a year, and John has dragged him back into this bland reality. He doesn’t want to open his eyes now, doesn’t want to face the great detective’s luminescence dimming in the darkness of his new flat, to witness his demise as his spark is steadily smothered. But John knows if he allows Sherlock to stay, this fate is inescapable; he witnessed it happen to himself, saw the haunted look recede, only to be replaced by something flat and uncaring. His life was no longer a crime fiction novel, and he became yet another cardboard cutout. Not quite the PTSD-stricken shell of a human he once was, thanks to Mary, but close enough. Still a mere shadow of his other self, the self that was enveloped in Sherlock’s glow: _The must luminous of people..._ whose light was he conducting now? No one’s. He’s just darkness, now. Waiting to be picked up and used again.

God, he does not want to picture this happening to Sherlock, this burning out, this dimming. This regression back to what they were before. It’s odd how something that had such a massive impact on your life can be undone so easily, like popping a dent out of a car. Like a crater in reverse.

 He cannot imagine what Sherlock is thinking now, watching him lying there with a woman he met just a few months ago, in a flat decorated with the detritus of the ordinary and boring. John’s heart twists a bit in his chest, clenching down on itself, and he knows his own descent into the calm, the quiet, the peaceful, is every bit as hateful as any destruction he could bring upon Sherlock. He knows he’s hurt the detective every bit as much as he’s hurt himself.

 For this, John is sorry.

For this, at least, John owes an apology.

He forces his eyes open and looks up at the man for the first time. Same porcelain skin, same chiseled cheekbones accented by the upturned collar of the Belstaff, same inky curls tumbling across his forehead. His eyes are downcast and his brows are slightly furrowed, and John decides he’s puzzling out what sort of wine Mary was drinking when she spilled it on the carpet, but who is he kidding. That’s hardly a mystery worth solving.

 He looks so real, John thinks. Almost as if he could reach out and touch him, run the ridges of the coat’s fabric between his fingers, pluck at every button and pull off loose threads. But he knows if he tries, his hands will go right through. He knows this can’t be real, because if it was, Sherlock’s skull would be caved in and bloody, his eyes would be hollow, his posture would be lifeless. But he can’t think about that. Even the slightest attempt at overlapping the two images-the Sherlock standing before him now and the Sherlock lying before him then-makes his vision swim and his stomach roll. So he doesn’t. He simply closes his eyes again, and holds the image in his mind, just another normal day at Baker Street, both of them in their respective chairs.

Technically, he doesn’t even have to talk to Sherlock; he could just close his eyes and go back to sleep right now, and nobody would even know the difference. But he talks anyway, inside his head, so only Sherlock can hear.

Because Sherlock may have abandoned him when he hit the pavement, but John abandoned Sherlock when he left 221B. Sacred ground and holy sanctuary, an eye for an eye.

 _I’m sorry_ , John starts, and it makes him a bit angry, because _he_ is not the one who should be apologizing here. He is not the one who wrote the ending, though, he admits, he is the one who closed the book and put it back on the shelf. _I was just...you can’t understand, Sherlock, you never did and you never will. But I was so alone, after. And I was so alone before. And I couldn’t see myself going back to that place. I thought that maybe it could happen again, you know? This. This companionship, this mutual life-saving. I met Mary, and Mary fancied me, and I liked her well enough. There was such potential. I just needed somebody to talk to other than the shadows on the wall. Somebody other than you. Because you were gone, Sherlock._ You _left_ me _. So you can’t get all upset that I’ve moved on. It’s not fair of you to expect me to have waited for you forever. Sentiment, and whatnot._

Radio silence.

No response from Sherlock, not even the autumn-leaves rustle of his coat or winter-breeze hush of his breath. Of course, John doesn’t really expect those sounds anyway, given that this Sherlock has no physical presence, but it all seems too real. So real.

Perhaps Sherlock has gone. Perhaps the confession, the explanation, was all that was needed to vanquish the glowing after-image burning on the backs of his eyelids. Perhaps now that he’s faced this particular demon, its retreated back to the nightmares it crawled out of, the ones with scarlet stains and coattails that spread into wings.

The temptation to peek is so strong; John’s longing to see one last glimpse of the man he cared for so deeply, the man who saved his life. It outweighs the heaviness in his chest, the promise of redemption more tantalizingly sweet than the knowledge of another harsh goodbye, another lifetime cut too short. _He’s not even real,_ John chides himself. _Just look. You can make him leave anytime you like._

So he looks, and he looks hard. He’s a man dying in the desert, tongue parched and throat swollen, and Sherlock is a mirage, a perfect image of water and shade so blessedly cool, convincing even in its unnatural circumstance. He’s a sailor adrift at sea, surrounded by liquid salt, and Sherlock is the rainstorm that brings fresh water and a wind to carry him home. He is a prisoner of his own device, and Sherlock is the drug, the pill that sets him free, just for so long and never long enough. He rakes his eyes up and down the man’s figure, mentally unravelling every stitch of that coat only to sew it all back together again. Down those long legs made even longer by perfectly-pressed dress slacks, over his own distorted image in the reflective black shoes, and back up again, climbing the buttons to the dip of collarbones, the curve of a jawline, the perfect twist of lips and then- stop.

Eyes. Sherlock’s eyes. Azure and cotton and turquoise gemstones, cloudy days and grassy fields, every subtle kaleidoscope color you never realized existed, but you just know are the only ones that matter. God, those eyes. John was always fixated on them before, entranced by how something could be simultaneously so very clever, so very alive, and so very distant. Like a mirror, Sherlock’s eyes reflected something different from every angle, and John was never quite certain what to make of them. He’d always try to see through them to the man within, always tried to look through the fogged opaque glass to the private rooms within. He’d never been successful, though there were times...times when he’d been so close, and he’d seen hints of fire in those rooms, a fire that, in the end, burned them both to the ground.

 _John._ Sherlock says, and it’s a hoarse whisper, something that was never intended for a human ear. John stops trying to look through Sherlock’s eyes, and instead looks into them, at them, searching not for the source of the shadowed silhouette on the other side of the window, but for his own reflection in a foggy mirror. And he finds it, finds it in the cyan eyes fixed on him in the darkness of back alleys, flicking back and forth as they unravel a puzzle. He finds it in a gaze focused inwards, wandering the halls of a mind palace to which he will never be invited. He finds it in wide grey innocence and smoky blue smirks, in the light of knowledge and the dark of boredom, in the uncertain colors of a spark-charged moment. He finds it in the shared glances as they chase their breath after chasing a criminal, in the understanding that a single look can bring, in the way he’s never had that with another person. He finds it when those orbs were dark with the reflection of his own eyes, just that one time when they were close enough to see right through.

He sees other things, too: refractions he’d rather forget but can’t quite bring himself to, images forever burned on his corneas, things not even a laser could cut clean. The problem with mirrors is that you only see what’s real, and there is no sense in denying it. So John can’t deny the things he sees; the two hands reaching out across a few dozen meters that add up to an insurmountable distance, outlined against a sky that may or may not be the same color as Sherlock’s eyes; the Rorschach patterns in red ink on pavement, mercury blossoming around those pieces of sky on skin that matches the cement; the two spots of color that cannot exactly be named, but that John still sees in every face he encounters.

Crystal teardrops splatter on obsidian marble. Headstones and bookends, parade rest at the end of a march, a soldier’s salute.

No trumpets, no flag folded, no dog tags or proud relatives or talk of all the courage and the fear and the hot desert sands that know no difference. Just rain and umbrellas, a few downturned faces and the headlines reading ‘fake,’ a speech that’s too short and thoughts so long John’s choking.

He’s choking, rolling out of bed, stumbling down the hall and Mary gives an incoherent murmur of concern behind him. He’s standing in darkness, feet against the frozen tile, hands braced against the countertop. He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s a reflection in the mirror above the sink and the faint smell of mint from this evening’s toothpaste. He’s the draft across the floor and the physical burn of his eyes dilating to the light when he flicks it on, and he’s fine. He’s a splash of cool water on his face, the pressure turned as high as it will go, a distant cousin of icebergs and hypothermia, and he’s fine.

John leans over the sink, letting the frigid water cascade over his hands, every nerve ending suddenly awake and firing, reminding him solidly of what is real and what isn’t. This is real. This crumpled white t-shirt, these pin-striped navy and grey pajama bottoms, this moustache that’s a recent addition and the way his hair is a bit more salt-and-pepper than it used to be; these things are real. Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective, isn’t.

And he never was. John has to keep reminding himself of that.

He swallows back his nausea and forces the world to stop spinning, gripping the edges of it and yanking it back into place. Then he turns off the faucet and lifts his chin, staring right into the mirror. Distantly, he thinks it’s a bit odd how the generally accepted color of glass is a pale blue-grey, when really, glass is the color of whatever happens to be in front of it.

In this particular instant, however, that fact does not hold true. Burgundy, black, heliotrope, ivory and two spots of waterfall blue float through the mists contained within the frame. John stares into them for a minute, two, and Mary calls out to him, asking if he’s alright. He says yes, he just needs a minute, go back to sleep, love. For a split instant, he can see his own reflection; suntanned skin that’s slightly lost its glow, sandy desert hair and a cornflower blue cotton shirt and panic surges in his gut. Then the colors coalesce, blocking out John’s face, and Sherlock is standing in front of him again.

This time, it looks like he’s falling backwards, as if any second might be his last. He’s about to shatter, dissipate, evaporate into nothing, be pulled back into the shadows from which he came. This time, he’s so fragile, so broken. This time, there’s no light in those light aqua eyes, accented by the blood-colored blossoms blooming around the blue, rose petals floating in glass jars. Blood beads on Sherlock’s temple, dripping like ink from him hair, plastering those wild curls to his skin. He’s falling in reverse, and John can’t tear his eyes away from the beautiful catastrophe reflected before him, some ghost awoken just for him to see.

John locks eyes with Sherlock, stretches out a hand to smear the blood away, to pick the blooms and lay them on his grave, but catches himself short. There’s nothing there to touch, nothing there to fix. No broken pieces lay scattered on the floor; there is no smashed skull, no shattered bones, and no amount of emergency treatment can fix this.

“You’re not real, you know.” John says flatly, and the words are a distant bitter aftertaste of something he once said, when he was a different man. “You shouldn’t even be here.” Solid, real, tongue against teeth and lips parting to push out air, sound waves vibrating his eardrums. “I shouldn’t feel these things, not anymore.” He’s not wearing that shirt, the one that smelled like cleaning solution, the one that dozens of other people also wore, the one that marked him as an included outcast. That shirt was one of the very few real things in his life, but just this once, it, too, is a hallucination.

John grits his teeth. “I’m not going back,” he declares. Sherlock watches with those sightless eyes. “And you are not real. You never were, and you never will be, so just fuck off.” He doesn’t add, “I wish you were,” or “some days I wonder.” Those, he bites back and swallows like large, hard pills.  Then he reaches up and shoves his hand against the glass, pushing Sherlock over the edge, tipping backwards, to shatter into a million pieces and disappear again.

He stands for a moment, rooted in place, struggling to see through his cloud of emotions. Then he walks slowly and purposefully back to his bed, determined not to rush, not to run to the comfort of Mary’s open arms. Halfway there, his leg gives out, and he has to catch himself on the doorframe. Mary has the decency to pretend she didn’t see. He limps to the bed and crawls pathetically back under the covers, where Mary pulls him into her arms. She doesn’t speak, she scarcely even breathes. Instead, she just presses her warmth against his back and runs her hands down his arms.

The tension doesn’t dissipate. His shoulder still aches, his leg muscles spasm, and he’s afraid to close his eyes because he might see Sherlock again.

He longs to close his eyes for the very same reason.

Jesus Christ. He runs his hands through his hair, tugging on the ends. He counts Mary’s breaths as she drifts off to sleep, the soothing movement of her hands slowly ceasing. He stares at the ceiling. Stares at the wall. Stares at the small mountain in the sheets where his toes stick up. Counts sheep, counts stars, counts cracks in the pavement. Counts the seconds until the fallen angel hits the earth.

How did he end up here?


	2. Three Years Previously

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Nothing happens to me.”  
> A nod of understanding and she closes the notepad, sets it on the table. There’s ink on the underside of her arm. “Maybe you should make something happen, John.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a warning for this chapter: slightly suicidal thoughts on John's part.

_Three years previously_

There is a gun in his bedside drawer.

Most days, he tries not to think about it. Most days, he fails. It’s always there in the back of his mind, a shadow of an idea, a promise he refuses to accept. It’s a rain check, in a sense, fate’s way of handing him an IOU: sorry this life sucks, try again. Maybe next time, you’ll draw a better hand.

He doesn’t believe that, not really. He doesn’t believe much, anymore. He didn’t believe Harry and Clara would last long, and look where they ended up. He doesn’t believe Harry will ever stop with the alcohol. He doesn’t believe he’ll be able to pay his bills at the end of the month. He doesn’t believe his therapist is actually helping. He doesn’t believe this tiny bedsit is home. He doesn’t believe that God cares anymore, or that things will get better, or that any part of him worth keeping made it back from Afghanistan.

All he really knows for certain is that the sun still shines, the earth still rotates, and a man named John Watson was discharged from the military due to a bullet in his shoulder and fuck-up in his mind.

He also knows that the man who limped off the plane, dog tags in hand, is not John Watson.

He doesn’t know who this man is. But he’s fairly certain he can’t stand his company for much longer.

Which brings him back to the gun.

Acquired under shifty conditions, required for reasons even shiftier, the Sig Sauer is the only notable thing in the flat. A creaky bed, a dusty tabletop, a broken toy soldier and his little toy pistol. A toy pistol with the power to end all that is real. A toy pistol loaded with ammunition, cold lifeless bullets that can stop the heat and the light and the spirit radiated by human beings.

Living ones, that is.

Another thing John is certain of: he isn’t living. Not anymore. He is still breathing, still walking, still a slave to his circadian rhythms, very much _alive_ , but there is no life in his actions now. He is a shadow of a man, only existing in the spaces where others aren’t, where something else has blocked out the sun.

So it only seems natural that the gun is so appealing. His life was already taken in Afghanistan, his soul already sold into despair the minute he walked away; sealing it with a bullet would be little more than adding a signature to his death certificate. A signature of steel and blood and last gasping breaths in a room that has seen too many miseries to care anymore.

But he doesn’t. He can’t. Not quite yet. He doesn’t really have any reason not to; it’s not as if there’s anyone on this planet who would care. There’s his therapist, but he’s just a client to her; she’s probably lost a few patients in her time. There’s his sister, but she’s too busy drowning in a bottle to notice what’s happening on the surface. His death would just be tacked on to the list of reasons to turn her blood to alcohol. He’s not staying alive for them.

John is forcing himself to carry on for one reason and one reason only; to prove that he can. At heart, he is still a soldier, and this is his battle now. This battle is silent and invisible, but that’s how he knows he’s winning. The moment there is gunfire, the moment there are wounds and bloody steel and lines of pain etched into his face, that is when he loses. The funny thing is, he knows the enemy just as well as the enemy knows him; they are one and the same, and it is impossible to outsmart one’s own self.

So he is at a stalemate, unable to win and unwilling to surrender. Some days the battle is raging so fiercely he can’t hear over the noise in his head, can’t walk away from it due to the phantom pain in his leg, can’t eat or sleep for fear the enemy will catch him off guard, and it’s all too much to bear. Those are the days he sits on the could linoleum floor, pressed into a corner with his head between his knees, the gun locked in a drawer across the room, and all he would have to do to end it would be stretch across the vast empty space and slip his fingers around the trigger. At least that way, one side could go home victorious.

Some days, he does cross the room. He stumbles and limps and falls to his knees in front of the drawer, desperately fumbling around inside until his warm fingertips brush cold ridges, the lines and shape so intimately familiar it’s practically an extension of his own hand. At least he won’t be killed by a stranger. At least it will be his decision, and not the random luck of a soldier on the other side. At least it will be his hand, and not that of fate guiding the bullet. At least he will bleed out here under the gray clouds and shrouding fog of this urban wasteland, surrounded by people who don’t know and don’t care, instead of under the blazing sun and all-consuming sands of the desert, surrounded by people who know too much and are forgetting how to care about anything else. At least he will be able to lean his head against his arm that’s curled on the bed, bury his face in his elbow, and pray the building is full of enough tired souls like his that the sound of gunfire isn’t deemed worthy of investigation.

Some days he sits like that for hours, legs cramping under him, feet pricking with pins and needles, arm numb from forced prolonged elevation. Sometimes the gun stays in the drawer, sometimes it’s simply curled in his hand and clutched to his chest like a beloved pet, sometimes it’s resting on the pillow, the barrel staring him in the face.

On those days, the sun shines too brightly and London feels far warmer than it has any right to be. When he opens the window, he hears distant gunshots, radio static, confused shouts. On the streets every civilian is wearing camouflage, silver circles on chains around their necks.

Eventually, he’ll shake himself awake again, massage the feeling back into his leg and shove the gun under his pillow, toss it back in the drawer, pretend none of it ever happened. He’ll open his laptop and convince himself to write something, open his refrigerator and convince himself to eat something, then backspace through all he’s written and backtrack through the kitchen to return the food to exactly where it came from.

Then he’ll make a small tally mark on a pad of paper he keeps next to his bed. One thin black line, always drawn with the same ball point pen. There are dozens of lines, some loosely floating in open space, some in neat rows of four with a single slash across them, always tilted to the left. Some are ramrod straight, others are shaky and uncertain, almost zigzags in the dusty light. They look like a small army, captains and privates and hours of marching, barracks and tired smiles, alarms and routines and purpose.

In a way, the tallies are an army; an army of victories, an army of times he didn’t give in, an army of reason not to do it again. He always does it again, but sometimes it’s simply because it feels nice to drag himself out of the depths, to rub the light back into his eyes, to save himself and deem himself a hero, to draw another line of honor on the uniform of paper.

Every day he doesn’t use the gun is another day closer to winning the war, another man sent home to his wife and children, another life spared and another hero who can finally close his eyes at night. Every day the gun sits in that drawer, collecting dust and smudged fingerprints, is another news clip back home about the troops overseas, giving hope to all those watching.

John doesn’t have the war anymore, but he does have this. And even though it’s sick and twisted, he’s not entirely sure he wants to give this up. Because it would be nice to not be miserable, it would be nice to stop thinking of the gun as his only friend, it would be nice to not need to count the tallies at 2AM when the nightmares wake him up again, but when all that is gone, what does it leave behind? John Watson, empty. John Watson, used-to-be. John Watson, ex-army doctor who really isn’t anything anymore. He doesn’t feel like starting over, he just wants to start where he left off, before the bullet shattered his shoulder and splintered his life: purposeful and useful, adrenaline and steady hands and the clarity of mind that exists only when under fire, in a hospital or in the desert, either will do. That is where he flourishes, and here, in the middle of London, there isn’t a battlefield. There’s only the war-torn frontier of his mind, and his only victories are the ones he wins when he is the only one fighting.

***

“How’s your blog coming, John?”

For a moment, John is still too fixated on the pad of paper in Ella’s hand to answer. She wrote _trust issues_ across the top in blue ink. He doesn’t have trust issues. Never did. Then again, he is reading her notes upside down. But that doesn’t have anything to do with trust, really. Ella’s his therapist. That’s what you’re supposed to do.

Trust issues. Bloody hell. Does he trust Ella? Not really. Does he like her? Well enough. Does he honestly believe her prescriptions are working? Not one bit. Truth be told, his blog isn’t “coming” at all.

“Well, good, yeah. It’s...it’s good.” _Trust issues_. He waves his hand noncommittally through the air, then lets it rest on his chin again. He’d read something once about liars using hand gestures to distract the other person, and Ella, being a psychiatrist and whatnot, probably recognizes the movement. Not that he’d have fooled her, anyway. For all he knows, she has an alert system that plays cheery tunes every time he updates his blog.

Ella raises an eyebrow. “You haven’t written a word, have you?” It’s not a question, more like a resigned acknowledgement.

“Nope.” John confirms, sharp and slightly callus in the soft earthen tones of the room.

Ella sighs, taps “trust issues” with the uncapped end of the pen, little blue flecks of ink pockmarking the paper. John looks away, out the window, at the ceiling, at the desk on the other side of the room that’s cluttered with various pictures in wooden frames. Ella with ex-patients, with current patients, with friends and family and some bloke in a suit. She’s smiling in each and every one of them, all bright white teeth and sparkling eyes. She has a nice smile, John thinks. If she wasn’t his therapist, then maybe...No. Of course not. Because he’s never seen her smile, not once, during any of his appointments with her.

After several more minutes of prolonged silence, during which John makes a point not to look at her and Ella scratches away on that blasted notepad, never once taking her eyes off him, she asks, “Why not?”

Why not? _Why not?_ The question rubs him fifty ways, all of which are wrong. Why bloody not. He has to fight back a derisive snort, force it into a pocket in his throat. There was a baker’s dozen of reason why not, the main of which being that it was a fucking stupid idea.

Write a blog, she said. It would help, she said. In order to write a blog, you had to have something to write about. And John _didn’t_. He had the PTSD, he had the tremors in his hands and the nightmares in his head, he had his seeming inability to eat anything of substance or find a job worth keeping. He had the dreary, low-rent flat that smelled like burnt hair and the detritus of somebody else’s failures. He had the neat stack of bills on the table, growing bigger every day, all of which demanded money he did not have. He also, as of last Sunday, had a blog. What he didn’t have was money, friends, a job, a life, or anything interesting to write about. So he had a blog, complete with a hit counter and a small personal description, with absolutely nothing on it. Blanks pages and two-finger typing, blank mind and the same two fingers clinging to what was left of the life he had.

Apparently, John’s prolonged and slightly pissy silence is a bit more than Ella is willing to put up with. “John,” she says, her voice not quite as soft and patient as it was before. “I really think a blog would help you. And if you don’t want to write it, then just tell my _why,_ and we can try something else.”

John fidgets for a moment, debating what he should say. It’s not so much that he doesn’t want to write the blog, it’s just that he _can’t_. He has literally _nothing_ to write about. He could potentially write fifty posts about limping to Tesco, describe his nightmares in vivid enough detail to make his heart flutter faster, mention the gun hidden in his drawer. Come to think of it, that might not be a bad idea. Ella would probably report him, because God knows the only reason she really wants him to blog is so she can keep an eye on him 24/7. Then there would be police and confusion and possibly some time under suicide watch, even though he didn’t consider himself suicidal. At least then, something would be happening, instead of this stalling, this constant repeat, as if the DVD was scratched and kept skipping to the same scene over and over again.

 But no, he can’t write about those things. Nobody cares about those things, nobody except Ella. Even he doesn’t give a damn what he does on a regular basis. Nobody would read it. Maybe he wouldn’t want anybody to read it, if he ever resorted to posting something meaningful. Really, he can’t see any upside to this whole blog thing. So he’s not going to do it.

John glances up, mind made. Ella is still watching him, waiting for an answer. From the looks of things, she’d scrawled something else on the paper while John was lost in his thoughts. He can’t quite read what she’s written, because her arm is draped over the bottom of the page.

“Well?” She says, expectantly gentle. “You can just write about whatever happens to you. Surely that’s not too much to ask.”

John sighs, shifts his weight despite the fact that the chair is relatively comfortable, then looks Ella full in the face for the first time in the whole hour he’s been here. His hands are shaking uncontrollably again, and he pushes them under his thighs, attempting to ignore the tremors.

“Nothing happens to me.”

A nod of understanding and she closes the notepad, sets it on the table. There’s ink on the underside of her arm. “Maybe you should make something happen, John.”

Make something happen. It’s not that easy, never that easy, and John is not one for self-pity, but self-hatred is another beast entirely. He doesn’t hate Ella, not really. She is only trying to help. Mostly, he just hates himself. He hates the fact that he’s so messed up, so broken, that his leg doesn’t work even though it’s perfectly fine and the tremor in his hands never ceases. He hates that he was shot, hates that he was sent back to a city he doesn’t think he can ever call home anymore, hates that he’s become so ordinary and useless and mundane. Nothing will happen to him until he can fix himself, and he can’t fix himself until something happens to him. Vicious circle, pointless spirals, the sun rises, everything is the same, the sun sets again.

“Maybe I should just make something up, instead.” John grumbles. Ella sighs, and her eyes flicker to the clock on the wall behind John. The hour must be up.

“Sure, John,” She says. “If it will make you feel better, make something up. Invent scenarios in your head. Maybe you could become an author. I just want to see you write something before we meet next week. Okay?"

John maneuvers his cane around to his side and stands, leaning on it profusely. “ ‘Kay,” he mutters, then shakes her hand. He thanks her, just like always, but this time he’s not entirely certain what he’s thanking her for.

***

 

 There is a gun in his bedside drawer.

He doesn’t think about it. He doesn’t think about how the cold metal barrel would feel kissing his temple, how it fits so perfectly into his hands. He doesn’t think about how loud the noise would be, how the pain would only last a second, if he did it right. He doesn’t think about how it would affect Ella, once she found out, or if it would affect her at all. He doesn’t think about Harry and how drunk she must be, and he doesn’t wonder about how long it would take for anybody to even realize he was gone. He doesn’t think about how his brain would look spattered against the wall behind him, all scarlet blood that shimmers like mercury.  

No, he doesn’t think about that.

Instead, he just closes his eyes and thinks about nothing.

It’s relatively easy to do, given nothing is all that ever happens.

Then he does think about the gun, how it’s a comfort to have around, simply because he knows he has a way out. He doesn’t use it because he doesn’t feel trapped, but back John Watson into a corner and he’ll put a bullet in your brain.

He’s not in a corner. Not yet, anyway. If he ever was, he would pull the trigger.

That would be “making something happen.” Maybe that would make Ella happy.

Probably not.

Instead, he decides to go for walk. Or go for a limp, really. Take the underground somewhere, maybe Russell Square Gardens. Fresh air and a little light can do a body good. Perhaps he’d stop a mugging, apply first-aid to an injured elderly lady, help a lost child find its mum. Make something happen.

He’s tried and failed to leave the flat no fewer than six times since his appointment with Ella. This time, he makes it out the front door.

Probably, nothing will happen.

Maybe, something will.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is late, but finals and family come first.  
> The next chapter will be more plotty and less emotional fluff, I promise!  
> Also, merry Christmas and happy holidays. May your winter break be cheery and bright, try not to drown in snow.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The threat of a bullet wound means nothing when you’re not even sure you’re alive. The threat of life means nothing when there’s no possible way to die.

John recalls that, on that particular day, the park was a battleground. The pinging questions bounced like bullets, grazed against his skin. Mike Stamford the sniper sat across a wooden bench and fired at close range, reloading his gun with “I heard you were overseas getting shot at,” and “bright young things like we used to be” and “can’t stand to be outside of London, can you?” John shot back, aiming with a dead pan glare, leaning on that blasted cane for support, before pulling the trigger. “I got shot,” and “can’t afford London on an army pension,” and “Who would want me for a flatmate?”

Then, truce. A chuckle, John’s befuddlement. _Why was that funny? How was that funny?_ “You’re not the first person who said that to me today.”

Looking back on it, John figures it wasn’t so much a battleground as a practice range. Two bored soldiers exchanging metal and gunpowder, firing at dummies that didn’t feel the pain. The shooters didn’t feel it either; how could they? There was nothing there, no rage, no adrenaline, no terror or death or light turned to darkness or blood or living. The threat of a bullet wound means nothing when you’re not even sure you’re alive. The threat of life means nothing when there’s no possible way to die.

They marched across that firing range, then, so complacent in their certainty that they didn’t feel the need to dodge the bullets. There was no pain to be felt there, just the distant echoes off the walls of Bart’s, the laughter of two men who had no idea what they would become, and who still aren’t entirely sure what, exactly, they are.

One was a soldier, but now he has no fight.

The other was a teacher, but now he has no knowledge he feels worthy of sharing.

Perhaps one was a saving grace, an angel, a matchmaker. Perhaps the other was a magnet, a soldier responding to a battle call, a charity case from some greater cause.

Perhaps it was simply a miracle, threads of fate intertwining in ways nobody fully understands.

Then there was a third man, ethereal and distant, cold glimmering starlight in the dark dungeons of London’s basement. Yet another being who had hit rock-bottom, and rock bottom had hit him back, yet he hadn’t the strength to stand. Invisible bruises bloomed across his skin, hidden beneath the smoothness of his suit and the silk of his words. He was a brisk autumn breeze, not unpleasant but certainly a bit unexpected at this time of year, in this particular place. It was just startling enough to press on John’s lungs, to lock his words away in his throat, and when he handed the man his phone, he suspected the handed over the key.

There was a mention of flatmates, and a meeting of eyes that was less a locking and more an unlocking, and John dared to spit out a sentence before he choked again. This triggered a hurricane, a windstorm whipping into funnels, picking up information and flinging it around in circles, demolishing the cardboard houses and the fake-fronted towns. John had never witnessed a tornado, yet he suddenly knew exactly what one felt like. It was a force of nature, a beautiful terror and the shrieking howl of wind that somehow made perfect sense, and it was his secrets dropped on the roadside for all to see as the charcoal twister picked back up and disappeared into the hazy green clouds.

And John was floored, and John was shocked, and John was dazed. And John was utterly certain this man could not be real.

An address, a wink, a spin on his heel and the flapping of coattails like leaves twirling in a breeze.

Apparently, he was always like that.

The name of the storm was Sherlock Holmes.

\------------

John recalls that, on that particular day, London was a practice range. Shaking hands with the maelstrom of Sherlock Holmes, all black coat and black hair and ridiculous London sky eyes, felt more like a salute to a commander. He was being welcomed to the company, handed a weapon in the form of “Sherlock, please,” and shown to the barracks. The casual mention that Sherlock had insured the landlady’s husband’s death was the first shot fired, testing aim and long-distance range, insuring that John would not flinch at the sound of gunfire.

He didn’t.

So Sherlock fired again; a decent flat almost entirely covered in boxes and files, the skull of a would-be friend perched upon the mantelpiece, something about serial suicides and police cars and Christmas. There was a grey-haired, world-weary fellow soldier introduced, one whom John later learned he’d be seeing a great deal of, and who was, in a way, a captain of his own unit. There was the distinction between great man and good man, and he was a bloody good doctor, and oh, god, yes, he’d like to see some more.

Looking back on it, John figures London wasn’t so much a practice range as an actual battleground. Stepping out the front door with Sherlock Holmes (World’s Only Consulting Detective), leaping into the street and hailing a cab, John was at war again, and 221B was right in the line of fire. The sun didn’t burn so bitterly, the sands didn’t throw themselves against his skin in an attempt to erode away all he was and shape him into something different, but the scent of smoke still hung heavy in the air, clung to the collar of Sherlock’s coat. Distant echoes of gunshots thrummed under the man’s deep baritone, and the blue Afghan sky glimmered in his eyes.

Deductions, fast and quick and heavy, rapid-fire, and John was impressed by his aim; he never missed a target. Only one shot was slightly off-center, but just the same, he was brilliantbloodybrilliantfantastic, and never once did it occur to John to say piss off. Because you need that sort of soldier fighting beside you.

The first fatality was a woman dressed all in pink, caught in the crossfire and shot by a pill. Sherlock gathered exactly who she was from the dirt smudges on her calves, the damp beneath her collar, and, for all John knew, the position of the stars. There was something about a case and PINK, followed by John left standing in the rain in search of a cab, and that violated the unspoken rule, because you never left a soldier behind.

But this was a different sort of war, and this was a different sort of John Watson, and he could remember how to breathe again, so it’s all fine.

This war was an awkward dinner (date? No, not his area. Bit of a shame, really,) a crazed rooftop chase, a cab containing a confused American and “Welcome to London.” This war was a drugs bust (This man, a junkie? Well, who was he to judge? If they tested his blood for recreational drugs, they’d find he was addicted to adrenaline,) Rachel and “a bit not good,” hunting in the middle of a crowd and she was cleverer than you lot and she’s dead. This war was a pink phone’s location blinking on a computer screen, lots of shouting, Sherlock disappearing.

And John’s soldier’s instincts reignited. You do not let a comrade go into battle alone, do not let him face a firing squad without backup just around the corner, a friend fighting at his back.

So John followed.

And Sherlock’s suicidal streak reignited. You do not let a run-of-the-mill cabbie outsmart a genius with a stupid game of chance and chess, do not let him go to prison without knowing that you’ve won, and this is how you get your kicks, doing anything to prove you’re clever. Dying to prove you’re clever.

So John fired.

And it was steady hands and a perfect shot, ripping long range through a glass window, through a cotton-covered chest, into the wall on the other side.

For a moment, the battle had ceased, though they still didn’t know who the enemy was. That was alright, though, because there was a shock blanket and a secret, giggles at a crime scene and the knowledge that one would kill a man and the other would kill himself, if only the other asked.  Bonds forged in blood and fire, brotherhood brought by war.

Unwittingly, John had just been drafted, for when you walk with Sherlock Holmes, you see the battlefield and all of London’s ghosts.

He did not know that Sherlock Holmes was one of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I finally know what I'm doing with this, stylistically speaking. Hopefully, that means the chapters will be coming faster.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Because it’s only been three days.  
> Three days, and John’s see more in those thirty six hours than he has in thirty six years, and his limp is gone and the dreams have stopped and he feels alive again, little soldier lost in war, and maybe this sort of thing is just the price of enlisting.

Three days later, and John finds himself torn between laughter and murder. Either seems like a viable option. It would be so easy to wrap his fingers around Sherlock’s pale throat as the man peers into the microwave, completely blind to John’s adamancy. Then again, the forced wide-eyed innocence that masks the genuine befuddlement is somewhat endearing, and John can’t say he’s not one to enjoy a little spike of startled adrenaline every now and again.

“I don’t see the problem.” Sherlock says calmly, turning clear eyes to John.

“You don’t see the problem.” John repeats, rocking back on his heels. “You don’t see-” he stops, forces an exhalation through his nose, then gestures towards the microwave. “Maybe you should look a little harder.”

Sherlock turns his attention back to the contents of the microwave, the freckles on his neck just visible above the edge of his silk robe. “It’s a hand.” He says after a moment.

“Oh, excellent. Well done,” John quips, and Sherlock just stares at him blankly.

“There’s a bloody _hand_ in the microwave, Sherlock.” John manages, half-choking on a mixture of anger and amusement. Clearly his flatmate is used to doing whatever the hell he wants, health codes and social norms be damned.

Sherlock looks between him and the hand, then back again. “It’s an experiment,” he says. Then he leaves the kitchen, as if that were enough of an explanation.

“Oh, of course, how stupid of me.” John mutters, and debates whether or not to remove the hand. Given the state of the thing, half-decayed and more than a little severed, it’s probably not worth it. Picking the fight with Sherlock isn’t worth it either, because God knows he won’t win that one. The man never seems to eat, so the safety of his food holds a relatively low status in that massive brain of his.

John heaves a put-upon sigh and closes the door. The hand is perfectly framed by the window, curved fingers beckoning to all who pass by. He hangs a towel over the top of it and decides they’ll have take away again that night. For the third night in a row.

The first time John stumbled upon one of Sherlock’s experiments, he’d known the detective for exactly thirty two hours and seven minutes, been officially living with him for less than that, yet he’d already shot a man and flat-out lied about it to the police. Something about Sherlock demanded that sort of action, all-or-nothing, total surprise and a state of constant suspense. So the eye floating in a test tube on the kitchen table wasn’t so much a shock as it was simply unexpected. And the response, “it’s an experiment,” was neither of the above. Because naturally Sherlock would be some sort of mad scientist with a propensity towards decaying flesh. After all, he was also a consulting detective, an ex-junkie, totally socially inept, and an utter genius. Mad scientist just sort of comes with the program. Every other experiment John’s found since then, he’s willfully ignored. Curiosity begs him to ask Sherlock what on earth he is testing _for_ , but based on the debacle with the pink suitcase and the whole “idiot” nonsense, he highly doubts Sherlock would be willing to explain, and even if he is, that John would be capable of understanding.

Going by the little smirk on Sherlock’s face when John stifled a swear after the discovery of the hand, though, John’s starting to doubt there’s even any rhyme or reason to the tests. Perhaps Sherlock just likes experimenting, never mind the results.

 _Perhaps that’s what this is_ , he thinks, watching the detective execute a melodramatic flop onto the couch, all ridiculously long limbs and fluttering cloth, _an experiment_. If so, John has already decided he wants to stick around until the end. He wants to see the results all laid out on a table for him to read, skim the pages with his fingertips, possibly publish it in a medical journal. The moment his finger brushed the trigger, the moment the bullet sent glass spraying across a room and blood shattering across a chest, he’d signed his life over to whatever test Sherlock was executing. And he is perfectly okay with that.

Because it’s only been three days.

Three days, and John’s see more in those thirty six hours than he has in thirty six years, and his limp is gone and the dreams have stopped and he feels alive again, little soldier lost in war, and maybe this sort of thing is just the price of enlisting. Let Sherlock carry out his experiments. A head in the fridge yesterday, thumbnails in the sink the day before that, just add a hand in the microwave to the list. Hell, maybe he’ll make popcorn later, convince Sherlock to watch a Bond film. Let Sherlock run his tests on John, leading him into unknown environments, shining lights in his eyes, offering reinforcement and altering the control, eliminating variables and examining the effect of X on Y. Whatever it is that Sherlock does, John will be okay with it on a fundamental level, because the two of them are the independent variables whose reactions are entirely dependent on the other, and only further experimentation will show them how it works.

Reaching for the phone, John shuffles through the pile of take-away menus on the countertop. “Do you want Italian or Chinese?”

No response comes from the living room. “Sherlock?” Nothing. Glancing back, John sees Sherlock sprawled on the sofa, limbs a delicate disarray, elegant fingers resting against his lips and closed eyes cast in shadows. Not asleep, then. Sherlock hardly sleeps, and when he does, he curls up in a ball like a toddler.

Taking a few steps across the room, John drops a menu on Sherlock’s stomach. “Pick something, you’re eating tonight.”

“Can’t eat when I’m thinking.” Sherlock brushes the menu onto the floor without even opening his eyes. “Digestion slows the process.”

“Ah, yes. Thinking. Your bloody brain castle, or something?”

“ _Mind palace_ , John.” Sherlock corrects indignantly, and John grins a bit. It’s far too easy to get a ruse out of the detective when it comes to his brain.

“Right, I’ll leave you to it, then.” Sherlock in his mind palace is Sherlock in a catatonic stupor. He might not move for hours. The detective makes a dismissive hand gesture, and John picks up his mobile to call for take-away. Chicken fried rice for himself, orange chicken to appeal to Sherlock’s sweet tooth. Sherlock, already sunken deep in thought, is oblivious to the order. If he’d noticed the potential trick, he would’ve said something.

Before he can set his mobile down, it rings. Ella’s number appears on the screen. Glancing wearily at Sherlock, John darts upstairs to his room and closes the door before answering. No need for his flatmate to overhear the discussion of his PTSD.

“Hello?”

“John, yes, hello. I’ve been reading your blog.”

Straight to the point, blunt, and John’s stomach twists. Of course she has been; John just updated yesterday, a vague detailing of the case he helped Sherlock solve. No mention of guns in steady hands, bullets piercing flesh, a perfect long-range shot and adrenaline pulling it all into slow motion. No mention of a knowing glance across yellow police tape, grey eyes meeting blue, an unspoken knowledge of something passing between them. That is not for anyone else’s eyes, only his. Only Sherlock’s.

What is on the blog is the story of a man who so clearly missed the war. He sees it now, standing beside his insane, crime-solving flatmate, who somehow cured his psychosomatic limp that baffled a half-dozen therapists. He sees smoke and fire and camouflage, and he is needed to guide another man through it, and that is more therapeutic than anything Ella offered him. She was kind, and she tried, but he doesn’t need her now. Not anymore. How to tell her?

“Oh. Did you...enjoy it?”

A sigh crackles down the line. “John, I think we need to talk.”

Momentary panic. Did she figure it out? Does she know he was the mysterious sniper who killed the cabbie? Certainly he was careful enough with the details and the tone, concealing the excitement that comes not with killing, but with saving. Still, she knows his mind, has been paid to peel it apart for months now. She never completely figured out how it worked, not in the way that Sherlock understood so immediately and intimately, but still. Maybe she put two and two together and came to six, a complete picture falling into place despite the few missing pieces.

“Talk? Alright, what...what about?”

“Sherlock.”

\-----

“So, John,” Ella leans forward in her chair, familiar pen tapping a familiar notebook full of half-truths John hasn’t bothered to correct. “Tell me about Sherlock.”

He shifts, looks away. Sherlock is not his to describe, not his to speak of. Or perhaps Sherlock is too much his, something he’s desperately clutching to his chest, unwilling to show anyone else. John’s tongue flicks out between his lips, tasting Afghani sands, and his hand unclenches at his side.

“He has a blog, too, you know. You could just Google him.”

“I did.” Ella replies.

“And what did you find?”

“Nothing,”

Silence, the same straining silence that accompanies a penny tossed into a well.

“That’s just it, John. I searched his name, and nothing came up. A name like that, you wouldn’t think he’d be hard to find. But there wasn’t anything; no Facebook, no blog, no criminal record, either. No mention of him anywhere. Absolutely nothing. You said he’s a detective?”

Awaiting the plunk when the penny hits the bottom.

John’s heart pounds in his ears. “Consulting detective, yeah.” _The Science of Deduction, Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective._

“I called New Scotland Yard, asked after a certain Sherlock Holmes.” She pauses, absently rolls the pen between her fingers. John holds his breath and gunshots echo in the distance. “They hadn’t ever heard of him.” A bomb goes off somewhere, and John turns to the soldier next to him, black curls under a shell of a helmet, mud-smeared cheekbones contrasting with bright, colorless eyes.

“Let me see,” John demands. “Let me see your computer, I’ll bring up his blog.”

Ella looks skeptical, but crosses the room and slides a laptop out of a desk drawer. She opens it and places it tentatively on his lap. Opening a browser, John taps in Sherlock’s web address. The page loads, and for one terrifying moment, is utterly blank. Then the block-lettered header appears against a foggy black background, and John breathes a sigh of relief.

“See?” He angles the screen towards Ella. She leans over him, necklace jingling in his ear, and frowns.

“See what?”

“His blog, this is his blog. It’s how he gets clients and...he writes up his research sometimes, he does a ton of experiments, hands in the microwave and...” _and ex-army doctors with psychosomatic limps who long for war._

Ella doesn’t respond for a very long time. She just stands, pen still in hand but notebook closed on the chair across from John, and stares. Finally, “John,”

“Yes?”

“There’s nothing here.”

A distant splash.

“What do you mean? It is here, it’s right...” He gestures at the screen, fingertips accidentally brushing it, leaving pixelated smudges behind.

“No, John, it isn’t. It says ‘Page not found.’”

Ella sits back in her chair and crosses her legs. A doctor hands him a steel cane. Months later, a man named Angelo holds out the same cane, standing on the doorstep to the place John now calls home, and the incredible illusion behind John huffs in breathless laughter.

“That’s not...that can’t be right. We were there two night ago, _he_ was there, and he, he solved it, there was a DI, Lestrade, I think, they knew each other. He...” John takes a shuddering breath. _Sure, John, if it will make you feel better, make something up. Invent scenarios in your head._ Ella’s voice, only days old, and he understands, but it makes no sense. “Everything in that post is completely true.” John says, calm, collected, voice pitched a bit lower to conceal the hysterics of a moment ago.

Ella raises her eyebrows and writes something in that damned notebook. Writes. Continues writing. It’s a lot of something, apparently.

The scratching of the pen against the page is making John twitchy. He must say something, anything, everything to make her understand. Sherlock is real, Sherlock is a genius, and Sherlock is fixing him by falling apart. Three days and they’ve already worked out an arrangement. They will far apart together, and thus not fall apart at all.

Fall apart, fall together, two halves as one whole. Something like symbiosis.

Yes, that’s true, that makes sense, John understands it, it sounds like chopper blades blowing desert sand in his eyes, and though he can’t see it, he knows it’s safe.

“I could call him.” John offers, palming his mobile in his pocket. “I could call him, and then you could talk to him, and you’d see. It must’ve just been a computer glitch, or something.”

Ella glances up from her writing. “Go ahead,” she says, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms over her chest.

John does. He scrolls through the four numbers on his phone (Ella, Harry, Mike’s from yesterday, and Sherlock’s) and presses call. One, two, three rings. A silent, uttered prayer. Four. A beep, but it doesn’t click over to voice mail ( _“I never set up my voicemail, John, it’s just an excuse for people to prattle on about nothing and expect me to care. I prefer text. Emails and text messages. Much simpler.”)_ , and the call disconnects.

 _“Mind palace, John...sometimes I don’t speak for days on end...”_ Bloody lazy bastard.

John glances up at Ella, who still sits, waiting. “He’s, uh,” Lost in thought? Unable to come to the phone? _The biggest wanker I’ve ever met?_ “He doesn’t like answering the phone.”

“Text him, then?” Ella’s voice is soft, more sympathetic than he’d imagined it would be. He hates it.

_Therapist’s. Come at once, if convenient._

“No, no, he wouldn’t answer. Not right now.”

_If inconvenient, come anyway._

“Okay, John.” Ella sighs, shakes her head gently, quietly says something that sounds like “what are we going to do with you?”

John’s mind spins. Other people she could talk to, anybody who could confirm Sherlock’s existence.

“Mrs. Hudson!” He blurts. “Talk to Mrs. Hudson, the new landlady. She knows Sherlock, and I’m living in her flat now, so,” he pauses, uncertain, but Ella nods.

“Phone number?” She requests.

“I, er, don’t know. I can find out, though, and text it to you?”

“Yes,” Ella writes in her notebook again, presumably something about Mrs. Hudson. “Anybody else?”

“Mike, Mike Stamford. He introduced us, works at Bart’s. That’s how I know him, and how he met Sherlock. I’ve got his number.” He pulls it up on his phone, shows it to Ella, who scribbles it across the bottom of the page.

“Okay, John, thank you. I think that’s all I need from you today. I’ll talk to these people, and call you in a few days to set up another appointment.” She stands and places the notebook on her desk, next to the photo of herself and the man in the suit.

“Right, yeah, fine.” John pushes himself up and his leg twinges, but that’s nonsense because Sherlock is sprawled across the couch at 221B, letting his untouched take-away grow cold, and Mrs. Hudson made tea for him that first day, just like she has done every day since, and Mike Stamford’s smile was a little too knowing when John handed Sherlock his phone in the lab at Bart’s.

Ella shows him to the door, and John tries to hide his limp. “Take care of yourself, John. Keep updating your blog, if you want to. I do think it helps.” Ella smiles and opens the door.

He passes through and utters a “Thank you.”

“And, John?”

He pauses, turns around slowly on the steps, looks at her expectantly.

She hesitates for a moment, lines tightening around the corners of her eyes and lips. “I’m sorry,” she says at last, and before John can ask what for, she closes the door, leaving John confused and cold out in the London drizzle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnd we have signs of a plot.


End file.
